Doom

Welcome to the first installment of VERSUS, an online segment where we’ll stream exclusive tracks from new records that have piqued our interest, head to head, and let you, dear reader, referee the fight in the comments section. To sweeten the deal, the commenter who makes the most persuasive case for his or her preferred…

Getting compared to Black Sabbath’s legendary debut is a mixed blessing. Of course, it’s going to stoke interest in your band but is there anyone that can measure up to the album that’s quite literally responsible for everything on this blog and magazine? Berlin, Germany’s Kadavar have elicited those comparisons, at least from the folks…

“This is a song for when you begrudge the sun rising, the coming of another day. When you curse the sky and the sun hanging in it. It sets the tone for the album quite aptly, I think” So says Witchsorrow guitarist/vocalist Necroskull, by way of introducing “Aurora Atra”, an eight-minute, epic exercise in straight-up…

Church of Misery has toured Europe seven times, but this summer marks their first ever visit to America. Considering that much of their oeuvre consists of love letters to American serial killers it’s a long overdue trip. COM appeared at the Maryland Deathfest (if you had a chance to see them, tell us about it…

Orange Goblin’s appetite for ale is the stuff of legend. When the Deciblog caught up with them prior to the long-awaited release of Eulogy for the Damned, frontman Ben Ward, bassist Martyn Millard, drummer Christ Turner and guitarist Joe Hoare were piecing together the making of an album that was recorded over nine weekend sessions….

The last time we saw photographic evidence of what Hickory, NC doom troupe Hour of 13 get up to when taking care of official band business—heavy metal, viz. doom in the vein of St.Vitus et al—they were hanging out in a forest with a naked girl squatting in the foreground. Since then they’ve went off-radar….

There’s no denying the intense visual impact of seeing Author & Punisher (ne Tristan Shone) perform using machines and speakers he has crafted himself. We’ll admit to being utterly mesmerized by it. Thus we are stoked to be exclusively premiering a brand new track—the opener “Terrorbird”—from Author & Punisher’s upcoming album Ursus Americanus on Seventh…

Much of Bobby Liebling’s life seems completely improbable. The Pentagram singer, despite a decades-long battle with drug addiction, is alive today and still performing. And Pentagram’s musical career/trajectory has been even more bizarre. Starting in the early ’70s, the band has experienced tumultuous lineup changes (and break-ups), botched recording deals and enough drama for a…

Aelter is a solo project of Blake Green, guitarist/vocalist for Idaho drone/doom duo Wolvserpent. When joined by partner-in-crime, drummer/violinist Brittany McConnell, Green’s work with Wolvserpent (formerly known as PussyGutt) marks its territory across the dividing range that separates riff-orientated doom rock/metal with its abstract spiritual kin, drone. Anyone who has been lucky enough to catch…

Earlier this month, we had the desolate delight in premiering Vallenfyre’s–featuring Paradise Lost’s Gregor Mackintosh on vocals/guitar, Paradise Lost drummer Adrian Erlandsson, My Dying Bride’s Hamish Glencross on guitar, and Doom bassist Scoot–new song “Desecrated“. To say it raised a few eyebrows would be an understatement. Who knew six string moper Mackintosh had the balls…

My Dying Bride have done something truly remarkable: they’ve piqued my attention, big-style. Maybe it was years of clandestine market research or a visit to some cobwebbed shaman, experimentation with psychedelics or an acupuncture/hypnosis combo, but deciding to record a 27-minute histrionic doom track about a supernatural dog is on the face of it an…

Obake’s self-titled debut is a worthy soundtrack to finishing off a nightcap on such evenings when you’re expecting some gnarly spectral giant to visit mid-dream and inform you in disembodied tones of some uncomfortable truths, or deliver a prophecy on your soon-to-be-doomed future. Sure, when the opening riff to “Human Genome Project” kicks in, Obake…

It took a lot of guitar amplification to put together Pombagira’s fourth album, Iconoclast Dream. We’re talking some 19, 20 vintage amps and cabs in the arsenal; that’s overkill for most bands, even those more mob-handed in personnel would struggle to justify having such an inventory. But with extreme doom, where tempos are slow and…

Welcome to The Lazarus Pit, a biweekly look at should-be classic metal records that don’t get nearly enough love, stuff that’s essential listening for students of extreme metal that you’ve probably never heard of.  Stuff that we’re too lazy to track down the band members to do a Hall of Fame for.  This week, we…

All of you good people out there whose recreational time is spent zoning out, hunting down and then getting suitably crushed in turn by overly hefty riffs should really be taking notice of New York doom outfit Batillus. Their debut longplayer Furnace has all of the weight required to wind on impact, but is also…

Mike Scheidt, the Black Mastermind behind YOB, gives mass and weight to sound waves. And I’m pretty sure that defies one or two of the laws of physics, which means that he’s doing something supernatural. Which makes sense, because I’ve always considered YOB to be a sort of spiritual, transcendental experience. Not that I believe…

Y’know, despite being erudite professionals here at the Deciblog every now and then there’s an interview that spirals out of control and onto matters unrelated to, well, anything that it was supposed to relate to like that phonecall to Steve Asheim about a Deicide tour turns into a fullblown dialogue concerning the merits of cheeseburgers…